Add color to the cardboard shape – I had kids use oil pastels since they would show up boldly against the dull grey cardboard. Adding the design is part of the fun, since they can try and predict what it will look like when it spins.

I used the die-cut machine to make the shapes quickly and easily (I needed about 50 stars) but students could easily cut their own.

Cut out shapes (I used stars) and cut an x with a knife in the center to poke your marker through. I used old cardboard from the backs of discarded notepads.

I became super overwhelmed with the art teaching and gave up on the lesson plan posting, which I will resume in September. I eventually volunteered over 1500 hours at Whitman Elementary last year, and SCRAP donated $140 worth of art materials, which was enough to keep 370 students happy and learning the whole year long. Here are some photos of projects we worked on during the third trimester:

Clay dishes drying before they get kiln fired. It was the first time most of the fourth and fifth graders had ever worked with clay and they did a beautiful job.

Third graders were studying plants, so we made scientifically accurate flowers with stamens, anthers, sepals etc. We dyed coffee filters with liquid watercolor for the petals, and wired them to leftover faux floral stems I found in the bottom of the bin at SCRAP.

We dyed the coffee filters before cutting them up into flower petals; the kids had a good time watching the colors seep and blend.

Third graders created a plant shaped rubber stamp out of recycled shoe rubber Nike creates for sport courts. We used acrylics and brayers to ink the stamps to make colorful prints.

A student inks her rubber stamp.

Ribbons, mat board leftovers, colored pencils and old fashioned scientific illustrations from a fish book I found at a garage sale made a great study of shape and color for second graders.

Students were challenged to reproduce one of the fish illustrations in colored pencil on their tiny mat board. We glued a scrap ribbon loop on the back for a hanger.

Second graders were studying animal habitats, and we used oil pastel on cut up file folders and added scrap paper collage details to show an animal they were studying in its natural habitat.

I found animal head stickers with silly googly eyes in a box of free things I found on Craigslist. I thought the students would like the challenge of filling in the rest of the art piece dictated by the animal head.

Fourth and fifth graders used discarded Halloween colored aersol hairspray to create “spraypaint” effects as part of their solar system collages. It was all the fun of applying spray paint without the fumes and stains and mess.

Kindergarteners assemble their invented animal collages using the paintbrush and watered-down glue system that worked so beautifully all year long.

Dozens of families came to see displays of student art and make their own art using tons of art materials donated by SCRAP. Students loved using the hot glue guns, which make it so easy to glue plastic together – it’s not something we could do in class. So many kids made such interesting projects and it was great to watch their parents interact with and encourage them.

Third grade students are learning about plants in art and science. They made plant rubber stamps and printed with them – look for leaves, veggies, fruits, flowers, trees, etc. Some of their tree paintings are also on display; they mixed up custom colors for the background and painted portfolio boxes literally removed from a recycle dumpster. We sketched trees in the school’s courtyard and talked about the parts of trees and how trees really look (not like a cotton ball on a stick), and kids used black, white, blue, yellow and red paint, mixed colors and painted a landscape featuring a tree.

I am pretty excited – I volunteered 154 hours in April, bringing my grand total to 1005 hours since September.

In other news, I will be changing the format from more formal, traditional lesson plans to tutorials. I just cannot keep up with the lesson plans and this way I can still put up pictures of student work and share ideas for creative reuse but be slightly less exhausted. This summer I will go back and categorize all the projects by material type, which might make it easier for people who are searching for creative reuse suggestions.

Thank you to Mt. Scott Fuel for contributing gravel and soil to fill our planter boxes we made to celebrate earth day, and to Seven Dees Landscaping for donating grass seed for our upcoming seed heads!